In the sawmill town of Cumberland, Wis., Lutheran saddle and harness maker August Wolff was an affable man, self-taught and twice mayor. He read poetry to his middle child and only daughter, Mary Evaline, born in 1887. His wife Lucy, a devout Catholic, ran a strict household rooted in practicality and catechism.
Mary Evaline knew how to handle pliers, tacksand hammers. She climbed thornapple trees, diagrammed wildflowers and in winter ice-skated from morning to night. At school, the lithe, independently minded doer "lived to learn, and so lived richly," she wrote in "My First Seventy Years."
With family support, Mary Evaline went to St. Mary's College in Indiana. She undertook the "rigorous life of study and prayer," learned new writing methods, and astounded her father by joining the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
In 1910, Mary Evaline became Sister Mary Madeleva. The new nun taught literature, English and scripture at St. Mary's. She wrote professionally — her Victorian-style poems and essays appearing in both religious and secular publications — and in 1918 completed a master's degree at the University of Notre Dame. The following year, she headed to Ogden, Utah, to serve as principal and teacher at Sacred Hearts Academy.
"I was elated," Madeleva wrote. "Mountains at last! Deserts, sagebrush, the West! Oh, pioneers."
Among the Academy's 120 female boarders, less than 30 were Catholic. Most were Mormon, and nearly all were keen on performing arts.
"Ballet and interpretive dancing comprised our entire program in physical education, which concluded with an ambitious pageant at the end of the school year," she wrote."You may wonder when between these delectable interludes, I taught anybody anything," she quipped. But she did. An advocate for women's right to education, with 7.6 percent of American women enrolled in coeducational colleges in 1920, Madeleva inspired her students to achieve their full potential.
Leaving the academy to study medieval literature in 1922, Madeleva became one of the first nuns to earn a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1926, Madeleva returned to Utah to lead Saint Mary's-of-the-Wasatch, a new woman's college located in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. She developed curricula rich in religion, science, language, arts, literature, and critical thinking, partnered with University of Utah professors and brought in prominent speakers. Poet Lew Sarett talked of the mind and spirit; Irish dramatist Seumas MacManus spun seanchaí.
In 1933, Madeleva studied at Oxford University and befriended worldly scholars and famous writers. She returned in 1934 to preside over St. Mary's College, and never forgot Utah.
"Some of my best years had been invested there," she wrote. "Days at a time we lived literally in the clouds and above the clouds…. and followed the silver path of the sun in its setting behind the mountains beyond the Great Salt Lake."
Historian Eileen Hallet Stone is the author of Hidden History of Utah, a compilation of her Living History columns in the Salt Lake Tribune. She may be reached at ehswriter@aol.com.